The Lords of Discipline Page 3

  I was not immune to the pleasures and enchantments of Broad Street, I was not immune to pleasures and enchantments of any kind. I admired the elegiac understatement of its streets, the whole taut containment of the lower city, fragrant in its vines, disciplined in its stones. In the presence of the people who lived here, I had learned much about myself and the way I really was. My flat Irish features often shamed me as I walked in their midst. There was nothing understated or subtle about me, and my aura was one of energy, restlessness, and inadmissability. I bobbed precariously on the immigrant flood; I smelled of Kilkenny, the back seats of station wagons, and the chlorine of YMCA pools. It seemed that I had to dive down through the waters of history even to glimpse these brilliant gouramis and golden carp who dwelled so easily in the distilled fathoms of their heritage. I was more at home among the multitudes than the chosen, and the chosen knew it very well.

  But I had come often to South of Broad, and I had learned that aristocracy was not a navigable river. My access to this civilization came about by accident; my instructors in the art of moving among the habitués of a charmed circle were surpassingly fine, and I owed them much. One of my roommates was born and reared on East Bay Street. His name, Tradd Prioleau St. Croix, paid tongue-twisting homage to two hundred years of Carolina history. Because of Tradd and his family, I had become familiar with the manners and customs of old Charleston. I found a parking space on East Bay and walked to the wrought iron gate of the St. Croix mansion. The house of my roommate was as splendid an edifice as I would ever enter without paying admission. Architects considered it among the five finest houses in the city of Charleston. The Tradd—St. Croix house evoked a mythic, possessive nostalgia from the reverent crowds who walked single file through its hushed, candle-lit interior each April during the annual spring tour of homes, for it was emblematic of the most remarkable instincts of that form-possessed society. All the strict and opulent criteria of taste that had once brought pleasure to the wealthiest merchants of Charleston could be studied at leisure once you crossed the threshold of Twenty-Five East Bay Street.

  Abigail St. Croix was waiting for me on the lower piazza. She leaned against one of the severe, rounded Doric columns, a large-boned, awkwardly constructed woman, silent in her meditative repose, watching me climb the steps toward her. Her movements were slow and languorous, without guile or stratagems, and as her large hands reached out to me I remembered how I had learned that there could be an immensely poignant beauty in the awkwardness of human beings from watching Abigail set a table or open a book or simply brush the hair from her eyes.

  “Abigail,” I said happily, running to her.

  “Welcome home, Will. We missed you. I missed you the most.

  “Will, I want you to see the garden before you go in to see Tradd and Commerce. I also want to have a serious talk with you before Commerce starts in on football and the seven seas.”

  We walked to the rear of the house toward her huge formal garden, designed and planted by her husbands great-great grandfather. Upstairs, Tradd was playing Mozart, the music spilling into the garden like snow out of season. Abigail talked as we drifted toward the bench in the rear of the garden.

  “You knew my sister had a breast removed, didn’t you, Will? I thought I wrote you that. It was such a grisly summer. Missy Rivers, the girl next door, you know the one, a perfectly charming girl but ugly as homemade sin, married a boy from a very nice family in Virginia. Mrs. Rivers was absolutely furious that Tradd was in England and missed the wedding. One of the children of the rector of St. Michael’s drowned while sailing in the harbor. His wife is practically crazed with grief, and he’s requested a transfer from Bishop Temple. … So much has happened, Will, and it’s all so boring.”

  The garden was scrupulously manicured and trimmed. It extolled the virtues of discipline in its severe sculptured rows and regulated islands of green and bloom. In this garden, few flowers were allowed to die on the bush or the trellis; most of them died in stale water contained within fragile vases near the reflection of family silver.

  “What are you thinking, you spectacle?” Abigail asked, interrupting her abridged version of the past summers history.

  “I’ve decided I want to live like this always, Abigail,” I said, making a sweeping imperious gesture with my arm. “What must I do to become a Charleston aristocrat?”

  “What do you think you have to do?” she said, as we navigated the brick pathways without haste.

  “Let’s see,” I thought aloud. “Judging from the aristocrats I’ve met, first of all, I should have a frontal lobotomy. Then I should become a hopeless alcoholic, chain a maiden aunt in an attic, engage in deviant sexual behavior with polo ponies, and talk like I was part British and part Negro.”

  “I had no idea that you’ve met that many of my relatives, spectacle,” she said. “But please don’t forget that I happen to be one of those awful people.”

  “I don’t mean you, Abigail. You know that. I’d love to be chained in your attic.”

  “Hush, Will,” she demanded. “I want to show you some roses.”

  It was in her garden that whatever physical grace Abigail St. Croix possessed asserted itself. She moved among her flowers with consummate natural fluidity, enjoying the incommunicable pleasures of growing things with the patience and concentration of a watchmaker. In this, her small, green country, surrounded by an embrasure of old Charleston brick, there were camellias of distinction, eight discrete varieties of azaleas, and a host of other flowers, but she directed her prime attention to the growing of roses. She had taught me to love flowers since I had known her; I had learned that each variety had its own special personality, its own distinctive and individual way of presenting itself to the world. She told me of the shyness of columbine, the aggression of ivy, and the diseases that affected gardenias. Some flowers were arrogant invaders and would overrun the entire garden if allowed too much freedom. Some were so diffident and fearful that in their fragile reticence often lived the truest, most infinitely prized beauty. She spoke to her flowers unconsciously as we made our way to the roses in the rear of the garden.

  “You can learn a lot from raising roses, Will. I’ve always told you that.”

  “I’ve never raised a good weed, Abigail. I could kill kudzu.”

  “Then one part of your life is empty,” she declared. “There’s a part of the spirit that’s not being fed.”

  “I feed the spirit with other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Basketball for me.”

  “Basketball?” she said, unable to purge the disdain from her voice. “You substitute basketball for roses? That’s so dull and common, spectacle. There’s too much sameness in the world, and sometimes there’s too much sameness in you. That’s what I love about flowers in general and roses in particular. Each one is different. Every rose that comes to this garden has its own inherent surprise, its own built-in miracle. And the world needs more roses far more than it needs more basketball players.”

  “Abigail, basketball is like that for me. I know you think I’m an idiot for saying that, and I know it sounds common to you. I understand what you’re saying about roses. I really do. I’ll probably never grow a black-eyed Susan in my life, much less a rose, but I think I understand how someone could become completely attached to flowers. When I play basketball, every shot is different, complicated; and each game is beautiful or ugly in its own special way. I think I look at basketball the way you look at roses or Tradd looks at Mozart or Commerce looks at his ships. All of us have been lucky. We’re all passionate about something. I feel sorry for people who haven’t found their passions. But, you know, Abigail, I don’t think I’ve ever found sameness in anything in the world. Not if I looked hard enough. I used to think that the Corps represented sameness. We all dress the same, we look the same, we live by the same rules, everything. But each one of us is different. When I walk into this garden each rose looks about the same to me, and you go to a parade at the Inst
itute and all two thousand cadets look exactly the same to you. But if you look at them carefully, Abigail, the same thing happens to those cadets as to your roses. Each one is different, with his own surprise, his own miracle.”

  “There’s hope for my favorite jock,” Abigail said.

  “But there’s something I want to ask you, Will,” she said. “Then we’ll go in and face the other men in my life.” Her eyes left mine and traveled up the brick, ficus-covered walls to the window, through which the bright, lovely petals of Mozart dropped into the garden. “You and I have never talked about Tradd. We’ve always had this silent acquiescence between us that there were things we both knew but never discussed. There have been far too many taboos between us, Will.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Abigail.”

  “What do the boys in the barracks really think about Tradd? I’d like the truth.”

  “They like him a lot. They think he’s a really good guy. They’re always talking about how well he’s fitted in since his plebe year.”

  “That sounds like what a courteous young man tells a mother to make her feel good about her son.”

  “You should feel good. And you should feel very proud,” I said, somewhat defensively. “He had a terrible time his plebe year. But that’s not unusual. I had a terrible time, too. But once you make it through that year at the Institute, they leave you pretty much alone. Tradd has adapted to the ways of the Corps. He’s a first lieutenant, Abigail. He’s doing a lot better than I am.”

  “Do they find him odd, Will? Do they find him effeminate?”

  “He’s an English major, Abigail!” I almost shouted. “An English major like me. The Corps thinks all English majors are queer as three-dollar bills. He’s gentle and unathletic. He has a high-pitched voice, plays the piano, and refuses to use foul language, which is the only way to make yourself clearly understood in the barracks. That causes people to talk, but it’s not important. It doesn’t mean anything. I’ve tried to get him to show more interest in girls to quiet some of the talk. But you know what he says to me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “He says that he goes out with girls at least as much as I do.”

  “And what do you say to that?”

  “I don’t say anything, because it’s true.”

  “Be patient about girls, Will,” Abigail said tenderly, touching my face with a large, hesitant hand. “Some fine girl will come along and appreciate you for all the right reasons. Young girls have an infinite capacity for being attracted to the wrong sort of men. I know about this. All about it.”

  “Commerce is a fine man, Abigail,” I said, uncomfortable with the sudden turn of the conversation. “He’s got one of those screwed-up Charleston first names, but so does Tradd. So does everybody in this sad, silly town.”

  “He was very handsome and charming and available when I met him. He was considerably older than I was, and there was as much pressure for him to get married as there was for me. I was gawky and big-footed and horse-faced and felt very lucky to get him. And we’ve made a life together, after a fashion. I think because he’s away from Charleston so much, we are able to enjoy each other’s company much of the time.”

  “Is that why you seem unhappy sometimes, Abigail? Because of your marriage?”

  “I’m not unhappy, Will. I want you to know that, and I want you to remember it. I have more to be thankful for than most people who inhabit the earth. I have a lovely home, and I’ve raised a fine and sensitive son. And I have a husband who loves me despite his eccentricities and my ample faults.”

  I loved the face of Abigail St. Croix as I often love the faces of men and women who have an unshakable faith in their own homeliness. On this overcast late afternoon, her face, in the green, leaf-filtered gauze of light, was both classic and frozen in its demeanor and repose. Her face had integrity, an undefilable resignation. If it was handsome, it was all a cold, sedate handsomeness that gave off a somewhat disturbing aura of wisdom and pain, of having lived deeply, suffered, rallied, despaired, laughed at her despair until the face that survived all these countless darkening moods and transfigurements was lined with discernment, with a resolute sense of commitment to form, and the power to be amused slightly by the whole long journey. Long ago, her face had become beautiful to me.

  We neared the house. Abigail was an unflaggingly dedicated student of her husband’s ancestral place. It was an education she gladly shared with me, and though I had no abiding interest in interior or exterior design, her enthusiasm was catching. There was no antidote against one of Abigail’s enthusiasms. In this extraordinary house I learned about the difference between Hepplewhite and Regency, and between Chippendale and Queen Anne. I could point out to tourists who happened by while I was reading on the wicker couch on the lower piazza, the enormous stone quoins at the entranceway, the exceptional stuccowork in those princely downstairs rooms, and the intricate delicacy of the woodwork. A passing knowledge of the Tradd-St. Croix mansion was a liberal education in itself.

  It was impossible to study the history of South Carolina without encountering the venerable Huguenot name of St. Croix again and again. It was a name with an enviable, irreproachable past (unless one considered owning slaves reproachable, which, of course, the St. Croixs did not) but an uncertain future; it was a name ominously endangered by extinction. The rich and the well-born were not prodigious reproducers of their rare, thin-boned species, and my roommate Tradd had found himself in the unenviable position of bearing complete responsibility for carrying on the family name. He was the last St. Croix and the burden of extending the line weighed heavily upon him even though it was a subject he assiduously avoided. I had more first cousins than a mink, or so it often seemed. If I died suddenly, the name of McLean would flourish prodigally for a thousand years; if Tradd died, the St. Croix name would survive only as a street name, a house name, and in distinguished references in history books. The grandeur and terror of extinction had formed the character of Tradd and had nearly ruined the life of his father, Commerce.

  We found Commerce St. Croix where I usually found him when I came to this house—in the upstairs sitting room watching television.

  “It took you long enough to come visit us, boy,” he said formally as he rose to shake my hand. “I’ve been waiting around since morning for you to show up.”

  Unconsciously, he led me to a seat beside him, while his eyes returned to the television. Commerce never looked at the person he was talking to during a conversation. Nor did he ever seem to change expression. Fury or joy or grief, it did not matter; Commerce had one face and only one face to offer the world.

  “I have many duties since I became regimental commander,” I said, unbuttoning the bottom two buttons of my dress whites as I slumped into the chair.

  “You were born a private, Will. My boy, Tradd, is a first lieutenant,” Commerce said, addressing the television. If I did not watch myself, I would find myself speaking to the television, too.

  “I know, Commerce. I room with your boy.”

  “Thank God you’re back, Will,” Commerce moaned. “Now I can talk to someone who knows a baseball score or two. Hell, Abigail and Tradd think the Boston Red Sox are a new clothing fad.”

  “I’m glad you’re back too, Will,” Abigail intervened quietly. “Now I can quit pretending that I’m interested in baseball scores. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll make us some tea.” She slipped down the back stairway, once more the dutiful wife.

  Staring fiercely at the screen, Commerce said, “Your last year, boy. You’ll be an Institute man in June.”

  “Just like you, Commerce.”

  “What does it feel like? Tradd doesn’t talk to me very much.”

  “It feels real different. My penis grew a foot and a half over the summer. That’s how I could tell graduation was getting close.”

  “It’ll have to grow larger than that if you expect to be a real Institute man,” he cackled, glancing nervously at the door.
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  “Where’s Tradd?” I asked.

  “He was practicing his goddam piano a minute ago. Don’t call him down yet, Will,” Commerce pleaded. “He doesn’t approve of mantalk like this. At least, not from me.” Then, leaning over toward the chair where I was sitting, his small, pale, ferret-like eyes still religiously affixed on the TV, he whispered, “Did you get any this summer, boy?”

  “In the thousands, Commerce. The tens of thousands.”

  “You ought to ship out with me next time. The women in Brazil will do anything you want. Anything. At least, that’s what the crew tell me. But don’t tell Tradd,” he said, putting a thin finger over his lips.

  “You don’t look like you’re feeling very well, Commerce,” I said. Commerce always seemed enshrouded in a nimbus of unhealthiness. He was a short, wiry, rodent-faced man who even in repose had a motor running somewhere, as though his heart was working for no particular reason. Though twenty years older than Abigail, he didn’t have a single gray hair on his thin, nervously vigilant head.

  “Boy, I can never feel good when I’m entombed in this city. You know that. I can never wait to get out of here, away from all of this. Charleston sickens me because I belong to it so entirely.”